O5R vs. the AFI

Last week, the American Film Institute issued their second "100 years...100 movies" list. As I mentioned, they made several mistakes. I decided to try and correct most of them. So, here is the actual 100 greatest American films, which probably only has a dozen major mistakes that I haven't realized yet. If you notice any of them, let me know. I'm fairly certain there's something embarassingly important I've left off. The numbering, once you get out of the top five, is fairly arbitrary. You should also know that I decided to limit the list to actual American films. The AFI included English films and one New Zealand film, but left off a bunch of other worthy British films. Which was kind of bullshit.

Anyway, here's the list:

1- Citizen Kane- Orson Welles-1941
2- The Godfather- Francis Ford Coppola- 1972
3- Casablanca- Michael Curtiz- 1942
4- The Searchers- John Ford- 1956
5- Vertigo- Alfred Hitchcock- 1958
6- The General- Buster Keaton- 1927
7- Singin’ In The Rain- Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly- 1952
8- Schindler’s List- Steven Spielberg- 1993
9- Sunset Boulevard- Billy Wilder- 1950
10- Taxi Driver- Martin Scorsese- 1976
11- Dr. Strangelove- Stanley Kubrick- 1964
12- Gone With the Wind- Victor Fleming- 1939
13- The Godfather Part II- Francis Ford Coppola- 1974
14- The Wizard of Oz- Victor Fleming- 1939
15- Nashville- Robert Altman- 1975
16- Psycho- Alfred Hitchcock- 1960
17- Bonnie and Clyde- Arthur Penn- 1967
18- Some Like It Hot- Billy Wilder- 1959
19- Raging Bull- Martin Scorsese- 1980
20- Chinatown- Roman Polanski- 1974
21- Double Indemnity- Billy Wilder- 1944
22- The Wild Bunch- Sam Peckinpah- 1969
23- Apocalypse Now- Francis Ford Coppola- 1979
24- 2001: A Space Odyssey- Stanley Kubrick- 1968
25- Do The Right Thing- Spike Lee- 1989
26- On the Waterfront- Elia Kazan- 1954
27- Red River- Howard Hawks- 1948
28- Star Wars- George Lucas- 1977
29- The Maltese Falcon- John Huston- 1941
30- The Graduate- Mike Nichols- 1967
31- Night of the Hunter- Charles Laughton- 1955
32- Annie Hall- Woody Allen- 1977
33- Duck Soup- Leo McCarey- 1933
34- Unforgiven- Clint Eastwood- 1992
35- The Manchurian Candidate- John Frankenhemier- 1962
36- Rear Window- Alfred Hitchcock- 1954
37- My Darling Clementine- John Ford- 1946
38- City Lights- Charlie Chaplin- 1931
39- Notorious- Alfred Hitchcock- 1946
40- The Magnificent Ambersons- Orson Welles- 1942
41- Pulp Fiction- Quentin Tarantino- 1994
42- Sullivan’s Travels- Preston Sturges- 1941
43- McCabe & Mrs. Miller- Robert Altman- 1971
44- Network- Sidney Lumet- 1976
45- Goodfellas- Martin Scorsese- 1990
46- All About Eve- Joseph L. Mankiewicz- 1950
47- Touch of Evil- Orson Welles- 1958
48- Bringing Up Baby- Howard Hawks- 1938
49- Jaws- Steven Spielberg- 1975
50- The Birth of a Nation- D.W. Griffith- 1915
51- Modern Times- Charlie Chaplin- 1936
52- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest- Milos Forman- 1975
53- North By Northwest- Alfred Hitchcock- 1959
54- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre- John Huston- 1948
55- High Noon- Fred Zinneman- 1952
56- The African Queen- John Huston- 1951
57- It’s A Wonderful Life- Frank Capra- 1946
58- The Big Sleep- Howard Hawks- 1946
59- Stagecoach- John Ford- 1939
60- King Kong- Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack- 1933
61- Close Encounters of the Third Kind- Steven Spielberg- 1977
62- Rebel Without A Cause- Nicholas Ray- 1955
63- Paths of Glory- Stanley Kubrick- 1957
64- To Kill A Mockingbird- Robert Mulligan- 1962
65- The Gold Rush- Charlie Chaplin- 1925
66- Mean Streets- Martin Scorsese- 1973
67- Manhattan- Woody Allen- 1979
68- White Heat- Raoul Walsh- 1949
69- Saving Private Ryan- Steven Spielberg- 1998
70- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington- Frank Capra- 1939
71- Fargo- Joel and Ethan Coen- 1996
72- The Shawshank Redemption- Frank Darabont- 1994
73- The Grapes of Wrath- John Ford- 1940
74- The Best Years of Our Lives- William Wyler- 1946
75- The Lady Eve- Preston Sturges- 1941
76- A Clockwork Orange- Stanley Kubrick- 1971
77- West Side Story- Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins- 1961
78- Strangers On A Train- Alfred Hitchcock- 1951
79- It Happened One Night- Frank Capra- 1934
80- A Streetcar Named Desire- Elia Kazan- 1951
81- The Silence of the Lambs- Jonathan Demme- 1991
82- His Girl Friday- Howard Hawks- 1940
83- Patton- Franklin J. Schaffner- 1970
84- Days of Heaven- Terrence Malick- 1978
85- The Philadelphia Story- George Cukor- 1940
86- Blade Runner- Ridley Scott- 1982
87- Sweet Smell of Success- Alexander Mackendrick- 1957
88- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid- George Roy Hill- 1969
89- JFK- Oliver Stone- 1991
90- The Exorcist- William Friedkin- 1973
91- The Producers- Mel Brooks- 1968
92- L.A. Confidential- Curtis Hanson- 1997
93- This Is Spinal Tap- Rob Reiner- 1984
94- The Bride of Frankenstein- James Whale- 1935
95- M*A*S*H- Robert Altman- 1970
96- Laura- Otto Preminger- 1944
97- House of Games- David Mamet- 1987
98- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre- Tobe Hooper- 1974
99- Rushmore- Wes Alexander- 1998
100- American Graffiti- George Lucas- 1973

Breakdown by decade:
1910s- 1 film
1920s- 2 films
1930s- 11 films
1940s- 19 films
1950s- 18 films
1960s- 11 films
1970s- 22 films
1980s- 5 films
1990s- 11 films

Directors with multiple films:
Alfred Hitchcock- 6 films
John Ford- 4 films
Steven Spielberg- 4 films
Martin Scorsese- 4 films
Stanley Kubrick- 4 films
Howard Hawks- 4 films
Orson Welles- 3 films
Francis Ford Coppola- 3 films
Billy Wilder- 3 films
Robert Altman- 3 films
John Huston- 3 films
Charlie Chaplin- 3 films
Frank Capra- 3 films
Elia Kazan- 2 films
George Lucas- 2 films
Woody Allen- 2 films
Preston Sturges- 2 films
Victor Fleming- 2 films (But... Fleming didn't direct Gone With The Wind or Wizard of Oz in the way that the other auteurs directed their films. Both classics of 1939 were pure products of the studio system at its zenith, and Fleming was more or less the last guy standing after directors like King Vidor (Oz) and George Cukor (GWTW) were fired after doing uncredited work. The real driving force behind GWTW was David O. Selznick, and the film was his vision more than Fleming's. So although it seems, at first glance, that Fleming should be considered one of the greatest filmmakers produced by any country solely on the strengths of these two films, he's essentially a film note in American film history.)

Live From An Undisclosed Location

So, I'm house / dog / chicken / fish sitting this weekend. Thus far, it has consisted of taking an unusually sedate poodle for a walk and watching the first season of 24 (only twenty bucks at Target. I know they're probably another part of the evil corporate oligarchy that I should be raging against, but in all likelihood they would just be the ones' profiting on the revolution, selling molotov cocktail kits at deep discount as a loss leader).


It's great to see that the incorrigible Stacey has finally found her way to our (by which I mean my) little corner of the interwebs. Gentlemen, be on your best behaviour, because she won't hesitate to shove the broken end of a bottle in your eye. I've seen her do it when discussion of Bronte turns ugly.



Little Brother is doing a free show at the Cradle on Tuesday. If you don't go, shame on you- you'll be stuck (not) reading my review of the show. In anticipation of the show, I finally bought a copy of their Chitlin Circuit album, in no small part because the albums of theirs I do have won't show the autographs from Phonte and Big Pooh that I'm hoping to get.

I had to work in the proper FOL office on Friday, and at one point I had to stand in front of a copy machine for an hour, listening to the first half of Green Day's American Idiot album over and over again (well, I didn't strictly HAVE to do that part, but it seemed like the appropriate response) It got way too much like a real job, so I had to run to Schoolkids and buy music to make myself feel more like myself again. Besides the Little Brother cd, I also picked up an old Sonic Youth album (Sister, mainly because I've been listening to Daydream Nation a lot lately, and that's the preceding album) and the new White Stripes album.

Right.

Update:

Okay, I was checking to see how badly the Braves lost (My pessimism was well-founded- Detroit dropped us again, although only 2-1 this time.) I saw an odd on the front page of Yahoo! that said "Be a Better Music Lover". Underneath this are pictures and captions of Justin Timberlake, April Lavigne (I don't care how she spells her name, she is incorrect), Kelly Clarkson and someone named Rihianna, who I'm not entirely sure who she is. I hate everyone and everything, and I am now once again actively praying for Nuclear holocaust.

That is all.

Not Dark Yet, But It's Getting There

You ever decide that, since you can't sleep that the best thing you could possibly do is listen to Elvis Costello and catch up on a blog you quit reading by a girl you used to think about most of the time? As it turns out, it's not as great an idea as it might seem when it first occurs to you. Just a word of advice. So I switched to Dylan, which is the kind of "in for a penny, in for a pound" thinking that led to the whole situation in the first place, if you look at things from a kind of large picture, kind of slanted and slightly abstract point of view. Kind of like how I keep typing sentences in this paragraph, despite the obvious fact being that it would be smarter to move on and just bitch about the American Film Institute, like I do so naturally. Blame it on the music. I would guess that a lot of my hang-ups, mental blocks and several planks of my idiosyncratic belief systems can be directly attributed to the music. Hers too, now that I think about it.

Anyway.

The AFI put out their new 100 greatest American films list tonight. I only watched the top 60 or so films, and then glanced at the complete list. Thank the maker that Nashville and The General made it this time. List is still horribly flawed. Titanic, for example, should not be on the list. Nor should Midnight Cowboy, The Sound of Music or... Holy Hell, did The Third Man fall off the list entirely? I mean, I'm glad Do The Right Thing made it on, but who the hell thinks Easy Rider or Sixth Sense is better than the fucking Third Man? Why do people still think that Shane and High Noon are better westerns than Red River or Good,Bad and the Ugly? Who thinks Tootsie is better than, say, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, or Night of The Hunter? If they were going to add a Kubrick film, who the hell chose fucking Sparatcus over Paths of Glory or Barry Lyndon or any other movie he made after Killer's Kiss for that matter? Why did L.A. Confidential get screwed over? And if they were picking a Lord of the Rings film, why did they choose Fellowship over Return of the King?

Shit, there's a reason why I meant to not watch...

Listening to Time Out of Mind might not have been the best idea I ever had, at least, listening to it at this moment. I really should have put on something less...thought inducing. It's like being in love with a woman who don't even appeal to me.

I'm twenty miles out of town, and Cold Irons Bound

Um...Guys?

Progessiveboink.com, in a list of the worst song lyrics, has this to say about Aesop Rock:

"This is a fairly accurate representation of a lot of backpack rap. Their strategy is to talk really quickly and rhyme words that make no goddamn sense at all. This works well when your audience is a bunch of college hipsters who are eager to excuse your lack of intellectual qualities because you’re black. What?!? No, that’s not racist! You’re racist! For bringing race into the issue!"

They do know that Aesop isn't black.... right?

Link. It's number 14 in the first list.

I've Made a Huge Mistake

I just spent a couple of hours (or maybe just one hour...or maybe half an hour) looking at job websites, and it's increasingly clear that English might not have been the most...farsighted field I could have chosen.

Hoom.

Affirmation, Baby!

The number one album on iTunes? The Traveling Wilburys collection. There just might be a sliver of hope for the future of music, even if it has to come from nearly twenty years ago.

Anyway, New York. I'm not sure when I'm going to feel up to writing up the whole deal, so I'll give you the thumbnail. Spamalot=funny but not quite as brilliant as I'd hoped
Yankee Stadium- saw the Rocket himself in the bullpen talking to Pettite. Pretty cool, that.
Central Park is the best reason I can think of to justify New York's existence.
Virgin Megastores are awesome, even if they are probably evil.

More later, maybe.

Everything Back In It's Right Place

Hey.

I'm back from New York. Details are forthcoming.


Probably.

Don't Dream It's Over

I'm curious as to what the critical reaction to the climax of The Sopranos will be. I loved it, my stepfather hated it, vowing never to watch the show again. Which shouldn't be all that hard.

Just needed to get my affection for the ending on the record. I leave for New York in a few hours. You can expect accounts of a Yankees/D-Backs game, Spamalot and whatever the hell else I do. I might even deliver your expectations. Stranger things have happened.

The Sound Of What You Don't Know: El-P In Concert

So, I was at Definitive Jux's website, looking for a good picture to pilfer of El-P, and I noticed the full schedule of his "I'll Sleep When You're Dead Tour", and I discovered that he's playing in New York tonight, and I don't get to New York until Monday night. The fact that I'm slightly irritated about not being able to see the show again tells me something about the show that we thought was the climax of a string of truly stellar hip-hop to come to the Cat's Cradle. (We thought it was the end, but last night the Cradle added a free show by Little Brother- click here to RSVP and get in.)

The opening act was Slow Suicide Stimulus. I had heard one track of theirs because of an alleged guest appearance by Aesop Rock, but if Aesop is on it, it isn't for long enough that I've been able to nail it down (either that, or he's rapping the brief hook. Or maybe I'm just insane.) Their live show was pretty much what I expected, only a little longer.

Next was Yak Ballz, who is inexplicably part of the underground supergroup The Weathermen. If the Weathermen were the Traveling Wilburys, Yak would be Jeff Lynne. Only less accomplished. His performance wasn't actually bad, more just sort of... bland. He's not actually a bad rapper, but he's indistinuishable from a whole other set of indy rappers.

Third was Hangar 18, who I was actually looking forward to. Both their album, Multiplatinum Debut Album (as they said at the show, "We took care of the "Debut Album" part, it's up to y'all to take care of the "Multiplatinum part. We did our half.") and the Donkey Show EP are fun, slightly off-beat pieces of underground hip-hop. In concert, this was hip hop made for the pure joy of the music, for the fun of moving a crowd and doing what you want to do. They played some of the key cuts off of MPDA, including "Beatslope", which was my introduction to the group on the Def Jux Presents 3 album. And, I'm happy to report, I got both members to sign my copy of their album. The streak continues.

Finally was El-Producto, the genius at the heart of Company Flow, the founder of the Def Jux record label, one of the most important figures in undeground Hip Hop, and, most importantly, one hell of an MC and producer. For his show, El-P went all out- projectors and screens, fog effects on stage, a live bassist and keyboardist (both dressed in fatigues, as was his DJ, Mr. Dibbs and his hype man, the Mighty Quinn). El-P came out with his face painted with wounds, and launched into "Tazmanian Pain Coaster". He played a series of cuts off of his instant-classic solo debut, "Fantastic Damage" and his recent follow-up, "I'll Sleep When You're Dead", including Deep Space Nine Millimeter (during which a stage diver, an unusal phenomenon at a hip hop show, landed on my surgically repaired right shoulder and knocked off my cap. Luckily a good soul behind me picked up my cap, and my shoulder seems to be fine.) "Smithereens" and "Flyentology" (during which the animatics for the music video were projected). Before "Up All Night", El-P gave the required anti-war rant at any and all hip hop shows, but managed to hit the heart of the matter- he was pissed off, first and foremost, not about Bush or oil or Halliburton, but about the fact that "good motherfuckers" were dying at such a steady and tragic clip over lies. The show seemed a litttle shorter than a lot of headliners' performances recently, and the encore consisted of only one song ("Stepfather Factory"), but I couldn't complain. And after the show, he signed my copy of "Fantastic Damage" at the merch table, (which is the most important thing, really).

So, even though the first two acts were mediocre and dull, respectively, I nearly had my shoulder torn apart and lost my cap, the encore was only one song, and yet, I was still a little irritated not to get to do it all again. Call it just another working example of faith vs. physics.

ADDENDUM: I finally pinned down the music that played as El-P's band took the stage. It was "Mad World", but not the Tears for Fears version. Rather, it was the version done by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules" did for Donnie Darko (which is one of those movies I've never seen, but people assume I have seen, and I usaually don't correct them.) All things considered, Sage's entrance music is my favorite (American Pie- the real version) but El-P's fit the overall millieu and ambience more neatly. You can all resume not caring now.

El-P Review coming soon

Wow, I made it to fifty posts.

Anyway, expect the review of last night's El-P show sometime soon. Probably tomorrow afternoon.

I might have to take up running...

So, in a moment where I forgot that in, like, five days I'm heading up to New York, I went and spent ten bucks at iTunes to finally buy a copy of one of the missing pieces in my Aesop Rock collection. It's called "All Day", and it was a piece commisioned, I guess, by Nike and iTunes for their jogging iPod thing. (I'm just impressed that Nike hired an American adult instead of just getting a twelve year old Thai prodigy to write a piece of music for a dollar and thirty five cents a day.)

I'm listening to it right now, I'm about fifteen minutes into the forty-five minute piece, and, like the single "None Shall Pass", it augurs well for the album. Aesop is foremost a talented lyricist, but in the past couple of years I've become increasingly impressed with his production abilities.

I should probably be more in a Jux state of mind than I am right now, since tomorrow night El-P is coming to town, and will probably be awesome, but I've become oddly obsessed with the Replacements' song "Alex Chilton" (about the genius behind the legendary unknown Big Star rock band who rules and you should all sell your possesions to buy their albums), plus Springsteen's new live album came out yesterday, so I've been listening to that too. Throw in the Buck 65 stuff I bought at the show, and I've failed to get around to immersing myself in El-P and Hangar 18. Maybe tomorrow.

Hip Hop is alive, but wishes for death

I had it coming, and all of the psychic damage is my own damn fault. I should have known better.

So, I can't sleep. I'm awake and I'm tired of staring at a dark ceiling so I get the computer out again and look at the baseball scores on Yahoo again, and then I click on a slightly interesting article suggesting that female MCs might be experiencing a comeback that fails to mention any of the female MCs that I actually listen to, and then I do the stupidest thing I could have, and I click on the link to some collaboration between yahoo and sixty minutes about hip-hop. And there it is. The poll.

Who's the best rapper alive?

The candidates presented are Jay-Z, Eminem, 50 Cent, Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne.

I have no idea who LIl Wayne could possibly be.

I cast a vote for Andre, mainly to see the results, which are:
Jay-Z- 53 %
Eminem- 16%
Lil Wayne- 13%
Andre 3000- 11%
50 Cent- 6%

I know it doesn't add up to 100 percent, but those are the numbers given.

Never mind the fact that KRS-One, Kool Moe Dee, Chuck D, Rakim, and a dozen other legends were ignored by whoever thought up this question. I'm used to that. But I really would have guessed that, say, Nas or Kanye West would have made the cut ahead of 50 or Wayne (whoever that is).

Huh. Apparently Jay-Z is claiming to be the best rapper alive. He really should know better.

Fuck it. Nevermind. I'm going back to not sleeping...

An Outlaw Faith Healer: Buck 65 (and Sage Francis) at Cat's Cradle

On Friday night, Keith, his partner-in-crime Joy, and I ventured into the wilds of Carrboro to once again visit the historic Cat's Cradle. We were there, first and foremost, to see Buck 65. Most of the rest of the large crowd was there to see Sage Francis. We arrived at the club just in time for the opening of the doors and in time to wait for the merchandise
table to die down a little bit. When Keith and I finally decided to take the plunge and hit the table, lo and behold, Buck was working the table himself and we were blessed with the opportunity to talk to the man himself for close to ten or fifteen minutes. What did we talk about? Many things, my children. We talked about his contract and distribution, the purity of old field recordings in the Allan Lomax vein and the glory that is Love's Forever Changes album. We talked about how the kids today don't know about Hip Hop's past and we told him about seeing Big Daddy Kane at the Cradle last Sunday. I awkwardly gave him the url for this blog, so be on your best behavior gentle and non-existent readers, because there's a small chance that the man himself is reading this too. And the man was kind enough to sign my copy of Talkin' Honky Blues, an album that you should all have purchased by now, expensive import price be damned- it's pricey to move product out of Canada into the United States and will be until we find that Northwest Passage.

The first act on the card, which amazingly started exactly on time, was the spoken word poet Buddy Wakefield. Wakefield's style of poetry stretches free verse past the point that his obvious inspiration, Ginsberg, went, at times verging onto the territory of the dramatic monologue. His work is good, and his delivery is captivating. The only shortcoming I saw came when his work verged from the implicitly political to the explicitly political, which differed little from the sort of basic leftist cant that leaves me weary (despite my own leftist bent). At the end of his act, he brought a local beatboxer onto stage, as well as a lovely young lady to vocalize for him, and the result was breathtaking.

Immediately upon Wakefield's departure, Alias took the stage. My familiarity with Alias is more or less limited to his work on the iconic Music For the Advancement of Hip Hop album, and a handful of guest appearances. His performance struck me as almost a paradigm of what I expect from Anticon, which is essentially a compliment, of course. It does cut the other way, however, when someone gives you exactly what you're expecting, it's often more of a let-down than you'd think it is. He's a fine rapper (and an able DJ) but lacked, at least on Friday night, something of that spark that separates the guys who you think of as guests on tracks from the guys who have guests on their tracks, if that makes any sense whatsoever to you.

After a brief interlude, which I spent being mistaken for someone with more talent than I actually have on the smoking patio, I made it back inside the club just as the banjos from "Indestructible Sam" began ringing out. I've thought, more or less since I first heard the downloaded Dirty Work EP that the moment where the banjos join the beat in "Sam" is the quintessential Buck 65 moment. Buck was, inexplicably, wearing a neck brace, and had a pocket full of miracles and confetti, both of which he flourished during his set.

After "Sam", Buck played "Centaur", a bittersweet mystery play off of Vertex, and "463", a haunting secret history from the Talkin' Honky Blues. During the instrumental portion of "463", between scratching, Buck spat the opening lines of "King of Rock". At most hip hop shows, the entire crowd would have screamed the lines in unison, but that didn't seem to happen here. An omen, perhaps.

He played The Floor", the dark family portrait at the center of his "Secret House Against the World" album, and "Kennedy Killed the Hat", from the same album. He played "Heather Nights", a fixture on mix tapes (actually cds, but I'm a classicist, or at least I pretend to be) that I've made for months now. When we were stealing a conversation with Buck, he told us that he had been doing covers on this tour, and he played "Fish-Heads" (He maintained on stage that he could tell the true hip hop heads in the crowd as being the ones who just stared at him while he did "Fish-Heads", but I'd wager most of them were just alternative kids without sense of humour there to see Sage. Then again, I'm a cynic.). He also performed The Jungle Brother's "I'm Gonna Do You", from their undisputed classic album "Straight Out the Jungle". Most of the Cats Cradle hip hop crowds would have been all about this, but like I implied, this crowd wasn't the usual Cradle hip hop crowd. (Whatever the hell that means, now that I think about it).



The headliner was Sage Francis, who has apparently become much bigger than I would ever have guessed. Apparently, signing with Epitaph was the right career move for Sage. I'm a fan of anyone who can place quotes from Dante and Donne next to references to Ice-T and De La Soul, but I'm curious about how many people in the crowd caught any of those things, but instead latched onto the sheer emotion of some of his tracks, tolerating the intellectual side that keeps the work from escaping him. At any rate, the crowd was his from the moment he took the stage with "Civil Obedience", off of his new "Human the Death Dance" album. Sage put on a fine show, playing tracks from all three of his albums, at least one song form his Non-Prophets collaboration, and a handful of tracks from his various EPs. His stage show is enthusiastic and shameless (in a basically good way). The crowd included at least one asshole who, while I was taking an inopportune piss, tried to climb onto stage. I'm not sure if it was the same guy who, sezing upon a off-hand reference to a
certain fast-food chain associated with a certain Colonel, began shouting "I love KFC", until Sage laid a verbal beat-down on him (more than once in the show, including here, "American Idol" was used as short-hand for most of the ills of the modern American culture). At any rate, I'm not convinced the crowd really appreciated the cleverness in Sage's lyrics, caught the various layers of references to the history of rock and rap, to literature and history. When he makes a Bukowski joke, how many of the skate kids there understood it. (This is, of course, my way of demonstrating just what an elitist and music snob I really am. But dammit, I was actually bothered by the collective idolatry for Sage and collective ignorance about Buck. I had to remind myself how much I really have listened to "A Healthy Distrust" and how much I really like the new album.) The highest praise I can think of for Sage was that, after his fans inadvertently made me quesiton my feelings about his work, his performance of songs like "Slow Down Gandhi", "Going Back to Rehab", "Jah Didn't Kill Johnny" and "Sea Lion" reminded me exactly why I am a fan of his, everything else be damned.

But he still wasn't as good as Buck...